


Thicker Than Water

by ebonyandunicorn



Category: Jack West Jr Series - Matthew Reilly, The Great Zoo of China - Matthew Reilly
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-03-04 17:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 10,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3077567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebonyandunicorn/pseuds/ebonyandunicorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an unfamiliar plane crash-lands in Jack West Jr's backyard, trouble is bound to follow. </p><p>A Matthew Reilly crossover featuring, among others, Dr CJ Cameron (The Great Zoo of China) and Jack West Jr (Seven Ancient Wonders, The Six Sacred Stones, The Five Greatest Warriors).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This work will (hopefully) be a novella-length Matthew Reilly crossover featuring several of his characters, particularly CJ Cameron (The Great Zoo of China) and Jack West Jr (Seven Ancient Wonders, The Six Sacred Stones, The Five Greatest Warriors). It will be set four months after the end of GZC and six years after the end of 5GW. It features: spoilers for ALL of the above books; old!West and teenager!Lily; some truly bitchin' OCs; and a plotline I'm not 100% sure about yet. 
> 
> Because I am attempting to stay true to Reilly's writing style, this fic will also include:  
> \- gratuitous violence and coarse language, and  
> \- cliffhangers and clichés.  
> If you love Reilly's books you will hopefully like this fic. If you don't love Reilly's books, you probably will not like this fic. 
> 
> Happy reading :)

**Prologue**  
Airspace  
Central Australia  
19 September 2014, 9 p.m. 

The lone Pilatus PC-12 soared through the night sky, travelling at speed over Central Australia, carrying only a single pilot and being battered by vicious storm winds to absolute hell. 

Hunched over the controls in the cockpit, the exhausted but determined pilot wrestled with the controls, struggling against the fierce storm and the sense of hopelessness that was gradually stealing over her. She had been flying for close to six hours, and both she and the plane were close to breaking point. Still, there was no way she was giving up now. There was too much at stake. 

Too much depended on her. 

Without warning, a thick bolt of lightning tore out of the clouds just above the PC-12 and hurtled to earth, searing the pilot’s retinas. It had seemed to miss the windshield of the cockpit by a mere metre. As the pilot blinked furiously, trying to banish the blinding afterglow, a bout of furious thunder followed up the lightning. It sounded – despite the situation, she had to grin to herself at the thought – like the roar of an angry dragon. 

At that moment, a low but urgent alarm began to sound, and the pilot’s grin vanished as quickly as it had come. 

It was the alarm of a starving fuel tank. 

The PC-12 was almost out of fuel. 

Ignoring the headache that was forming behind her eyes, the pilot began to review the situation. A relatively junior pilot, she was flying through the worst storm she had ever encountered in a plane that, while well-cared-for, was far from new. She had nowhere near enough fuel to reach her destination, nor could she turn back. With a short sigh, she came to the inevitable conclusion. 

She would have to land. As soon as possible. 

Once she had realised that there were no other options, the pilot began to prep the PC-12 for landing. With one eye on the airspeed indicator, making sure that the needle remained in the ‘green’ safe speed zone, she gently began to pull back the throttle. The sound of the engines was nearly impossible to make out over the furious lashing of the rain all around the plane, the roaring thunder, and the fuel alarm, which was growing more emphatic every second. The nose of the PC-12 began to drop gently, and the pilot leaned forward, squinting through the rain and the dark for a safe place to land. 

There were no airports within kilometres. It would have to be a forced landing. 

At that moment, three things happened in quick succession that suddenly made everything a lot more difficult. 

First, a furious updraft sprang up suddenly and caught the PC-12 under her left wing, jerking the plane violently. Second, a blinding strike of lightning flashed down, millimetres from the windshield, illuminating the scene in front of the plane – a scene that made the pilot’s heart drop into her stomach. And finally, the beeping fuel alarm cut out and was replaced by a low, constant whine. 

The pilot grappled desperately with the yoke of the plane, struggling against the angry wind to bring the PC-12 level. As the lightning flashed, she saw with a thrill of pure horror that the ground was much, much closer than she had expected it to be. With exhaustion, rain and the fuel alarm distracting her, busy squinting through the windshield for a safe place to land, she had neglected to check her altimeter for a few crucial moments. In that time, the plane had dropped almost a thousand feet. 

For all that, the low whine was the worst news. 

It meant that she was officially _out_ of fuel. 

‘Shit, shit!’ the pilot yelled, wrestling with the control yoke, yanking back the throttle – but it was too late. 

With a final, hopeless moan, the PC-12 began to fall clean out of the sky.


	2. Exposure: First Contact I

## 

PART I: EXPOSURE

**First Contact**  
Simpson Desert  
South Australia  
19 September 2014, 9:04 p.m. 

Moments before an unfamiliar plane crash-landed in his backyard, Jack West Jr was engaged in one of his least-favourite activities of all time: arguing with his daughter Lily. 

Jack West Jr was no stranger to conflict. He had once been ranked on a list of the top ten soldiers in the world. He had fought for his life in locations all over the globe, and had had more brushes with death than he could count.

And yet, he had never felt so hopeless in battle as he did when he fought with Lily. 

Maybe it was the way he still saw her ten-year-old self, all bright eyes and innocence, whenever he looked into her face. Maybe it was the fact that her fierce intelligence could talk circles around almost every point he tried to make. Maybe it was the sadness he knew Zoe felt whenever they argued. Or maybe it was the fact that no matter how many trap systems he had evaded, enemy soldiers he had felled, or apocalypses he had prevented – no matter how good he was as a soldier and a hero, fighting with his daughter still broke his heart. 

‘I’m not a child anymore, Dad!’ she was saying furiously, shattering the tranquillity of their living room. ‘If I want to do this, I’m going to do it, and you can’t stop me!’ 

And with a final toss of her beautiful black hair, Lily stalked out of the room, the slam of the door echoing long after she had gone. 

Jack West heaved a long sigh and collapsed onto the couch, absentmindedly rubbing his left elbow, where superstrong titanium met aging human flesh. At 45, Jack’s body was as fit and his mind sharp as ever, but there were streaks of grey in his brown hair now and the prosthetic arm chafed on occasion. _If Wizard were here…_ he thought, but cut himself off. The clever, kind professor who had built his prosthetic arm so many years ago was long gone. 

‘You’re getting old, Jack,’ he muttered to himself. 

Old and tired. 

It was surprising how exhausting civilian life could be. After the events on Easter Island six years ago, during which Jack and his team had saved the world from the calamitous Dark Sun, life for the West family had settled into disturbing normality. Lily had returned to school, and Zoe had the occasional SFA mission, but Jack was a little lost. Although he had flatly refused several generous job offers from the government, the SAS, and any other organisation that had heard from him, he was forced to admit after about a year that things were getting, well, a little dull. 

So he had taken a leaf out of his daughter’s book and gone back to school. Flinders University, South Australia was no Trinity College, Dublin, but it offered a reasonable number of archaeology and ancient history courses, most of which he could study both part-time and online. For four years he had occupied himself with everything from ethnoarchaeology to historical artefact analysis, the result of which was his third master’s degree. When he had graduated, Zoe had thrown him a party and invited all of the old crew – Stretch, Pooh Bear, Sky Monster, even the Adamson twins. It wasn’t often that the team saw each other anymore, and that night had been one of the more enjoyable ones Jack had had in a while. 

It had probably had a lot to do with Lily, who had been so overjoyed to see Pooh Bear and the others that she had temporarily forgotten whichever argument she’d been having with Jack that day. 

He wondered what it was going to take for her to forget this one. 

Not two seconds later, he got his answer.

∞

A low roar, quickly building and nearing, and then –

CRASH! 

It sounded like a car accident only yards from his back verandah. Jack’s heart was immediately in his throat as he remembered Lily flouncing out of the room – in the direction of the back verandah and from there, the garage. _Oh God no,_ he thought, tearing from the room in the direction of the noise, snatching a military-grade LED torch from a shelf by the door as he ran. 

A furious storm was raging outside, but Jack didn’t hesitate for a second. He threw open the door and strode out onto the verandah, flicked the torch onto its highest setting and shone it out into the night. 

‘Daddy?’ 

The call came from somewhere off to his left. 

And a second later, from behind him: 

‘Jack?’ 

_Lily. Zoe._ Jack sighed in relief and turned around to his wife first. Sometimes he didn’t think Zoe Kissane-West had aged a day since he had first met her in Dublin – smart, fit and beautiful, with Irish blue eyes and blonde hair in a messy ponytail, she moved to his side and stared out into the darkness of the yard. ‘What is it?’ she asked him. ‘Are we under attack?’ 

‘God, I hope not,’ Jack answered honestly. The last time his farm had been attack, only a timely warning from Wizard had saved his family. ‘Lily, where are you?’ he yelled, now moving in the direction of her shout. A second later she had emerged from around the corner of the house, confusion and fear splashed on her face. 

‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘I heard a crash –’ 

‘Some kind of vehicle,’ Jack replied, shining the torch out into the darkness. The bright white beam illuminated nothing but soaked ground as he panned it slowly over the yard, and then – 

Five hundred metres from his verandah was a plane. 

It had crashed straight into his backyard.


	3. Exposure: First Contact II

‘It’s a Pilatus PC-12,’ Jack said, staring out into the darkness at the crashed plane. ‘Manufactured in Switzerland, but predominantly used in Australia by the Royal Flying Doctors.’ 

‘And outside of Australia?’ Zoe asked. 

‘Corporate transport mostly. Some USAF special ops. But it’s renowned for its ability to fly long distances,’ Jack replied. ‘It could have come from anywhere.’ 

‘Are they enemies?’ Lily wondered. 

‘They might not even be alive to tell us _who_ they are,’ Jack said. ‘That was one hell of a landing.’ He ducked back into the house and began to grab supplies off shelves and out of cabinets: three pair of night-vision goggles, two of which he tossed to Lily and Zoe; a double-holstered gun belt; and, after a moment’s hesitation, a battered fireman’s helmet. 

Then he threw a canvas jacket over his civvies and was off, out into the rain and the darkness, with Zoe and Lily beside him.

∞

The PC-12 had crashed onto a flat piece of ground, with no trees or even grass to cushion the impact. It had landed butt-first – the rear wheel had been shorn off and the tail was crumpled at an odd angle. Its propeller was still turning slowly and a several alarms were whining. 

As they neared, Jack could make out the crumpled figure in the cockpit. 

‘Is he alive?’ Lily whispered, staring in through the rain-soaked glass of the front windshield. 

‘She,’ Zoe corrected, to Lily’s surprise. 

‘Impossible to tell from here. We’re gonna have to get her out.’ Jack slammed his titanium fist on the glass a few times, but the pilot, obviously unconscious, did not respond. He pulled back and looked the plane over again. It was impossible to open the forward passenger door from the outside, but the large cargo door towards the tail had crumpled inwards, leaving a gaping hole about the size of – 

‘Lily. Can you crawl through there and get her out?’ 

‘Yeah!’ It had been years since Lily had been asked to crawl through a space too small for her parents, but at 18 she was still a head shorter than Jack and slimmer than both he and Zoe. 

‘Check if there are any other passengers, too. And be quick – the last thing we want is for this thing to explode.’ 

‘Is that likely?’ Zoe asked, but before she got her answer Lily had squeezed her way through the small hole in the cargo door and vanished.

∞

It was pitch dark inside the plane, but with her night-vision goggles on, Lily could easily make out the dark shapes of the seats in the cabin – all were empty. The door to the cockpit was open, so she wriggled into the aisle between the seats and hurried towards where the pilot was slumped over her controls. 

Lily felt for a pulse in the side of her neck: weak, but there. 

She was alive. 

‘Hello? Miss?’ Lily tapped the woman’s shoulder, then slapped her cheek, but she was deeply unconscious. The girl chewed her lip for a moment, then reached around the pilot’s body to undo the safety harness holding her into the seat. 

As she did so, Lily saw something that made her gasp. 

The left side of the pilot’s face had been viciously mauled by a series of criss-crossing scars. For a second Lily’s mind raced as she tried to imagine what could have caused that kind of damage in the crash, but then logic kicked in and told her that the scars were very old. She checked the pilot’s body for other injuries: one of her legs was bent at a worrying angle, and there was blood matted in her blonde hair. A deep bruise was blackening around her right eye, while what looked like claw marks had torn three deep gashes in her left shoulder. 

But… 

_None of this makes any sense,_ Lily thought, confused. She had never been in a plane crash before, but there was no debris in the cockpit that could have caused the deep scratches, and the safety harness would have prevented her face from slamming into the controls or the yoke. Besides the probably broken leg, which, Lily reasoned, could have been caused by the impact, none of the pilot’s other wounds were from the crash. 

‘What happened to you?’ Lily whispered.


	4. Exposure: First Contact III

A sudden fierce bolt of lightning shot out of the sky, making Lily squeal. Her night-vision goggles had amplified the brightness of the strike, blinding her for a few moments. As she tore off the goggles and blinked frantically, a second strike lit up the night and Lily was jolted back to her senses. The downed plane was the only big, unearthed metallic object for miles around, and if the lightning came any closer and she and the pilot were still in it – 

‘We gotta go,’ Lily said, snapping her goggles back into place. Fortunately, the pilot was even shorter than _she_ was, and though small, Lily was no weakling. She pulled the pilot roughly upright and supported her, turning towards the cabin, but then she stopped. The cockpit was cramped and there was even less room to manoeuvre out in the cabin – and she wasn’t sure how easy it would be to get them both out through the hole in the cargo door. Chewing her lip again, Lily turned back to the controls and quickly ran her eyes over the many buttons and levers, looking for – 

‘Ah ha!’ she said triumphantly, slamming her finger down on the button marked PASS DOOR OPEN. 

Nothing happened. 

The controls or maybe the door itself had been too damaged in the crash to function. ‘Damn,’ Lily whispered, squaring her shoulders. There was no other option now. She began to half-carry, half-drag the pilot through the cramped cabin towards the hole in the cargo door. The lightning was coming more regularly now – eventually she had to rip off her night vision goggles for good and fight her way blind past the seats towards where she remembered the hole in the door to be, illuminated every few moments by another lightning strike. 

‘Lily?’ Jack called from outside. 

‘I’m coming!’ she yelled back over the thunder. ‘Can you shine a light in here?’ 

Jack’s hand appeared first, holding his torch, before he poked his head through and looked towards Lily. ‘That’s the way, kiddo,’ he said with a grin when he saw her supporting the pilot. Another lightning strike. 

‘Jack…’ Zoe’s worried voice. 

‘We’re coming,’ he answered. ‘Come on, Lily. That storm’s getting closer.’ 

‘I don't know if she’s going to fit…’ 

‘Sure she will. She’s as tiny as you, kiddo.’ Lily reached the hole, dropped to her knees. Holding the torch in his teeth, Jack shoved his hands through up to the elbows – his shoulders were too broad – and helped guide the pilot’s scarred head and slimmer shoulders out of the plane. The lightning was flashing almost every second. 

The pilot’s feet disappeared through the hole and Lily watched as Jack handed her to Zoe. ‘Your turn,’ he said to Lily, crouching down just outside of the plane and shining the torch for her, but it was barely needed now – the lightning was so frequent. Lily pulled herself through the hole, head and torso, wriggling free – 

‘Ow!’ 

The belt loop on her jeans had snagged on a jagged strip of metal that had bent away from the door. 

She was stuck. 

Panic began to bubble in her stomach. She wriggled and squirmed, but the metal was bent back on itself again, and she couldn’t pull herself free. The more she struggled, the more she seemed to be caught. 

‘Lily…’ Jack said urgently. 

‘I’m trying! Ow,’ Lily gasped, as a twist of her hips caused the jagged metal to draw blood in an angry line underneath her ribcage. Half-hanging out of the plane, blinking tears and rain out of her eyes, she reached down and tried to free herself with her fingers, but it was impossible. The rain obscured her vision and her fingers slipped on the metal. 

‘Jack, come on!’ Zoe shouted, halfway to the house, holding the pilot across her shoulders in a fireman’s carry. 

Jack glanced over his shoulder, then back at Lily. As another bolt of lightning, terrifyingly close now, illuminated the scene, he pulled a Leatherman knife from his canvas jacket. ‘Shove over,’ he said, before putting the torch back between his teeth and leaning forward to shine the light into the space where the metal had caught her jeans. Lily held her breath, but her father’s hands were steady as he pulled the frayed material of her belt loop away from the metal enough to slide the blade of the knife through the gap and cut her free. 

‘Let’s go, kiddo,’ he said, straightening up and reaching down a hand to help pull her through the hole. ‘And cover your ears.’ 

‘Thanks,’ she gasped as they emerged and began to run after Zoe towards the house. 

Three steps from the verandah, the lightning finally struck. 

Lily bit down on a scream as she felt every hair on her body stand on end. Turning, her hands pressed tight over her ears, she caught a glimpse of the wreckage of the plane electrified, the blue bolt of lightning forming an eerie, blinding bridge between heaven and earth for a fraction of a second before it vanished. The answering thunder was loud enough to hurt even through the palms of her hands. She leapt onto the verandah after Zoe and Jack, who ushered her quickly into the house and slammed the door behind her. 

Safe from the storm.  


	5. Exposure: First Contact IV

The farmhouse on Jack West Jr’s vast outback property was a fairly simple affair. Besides the many surveillance systems that guarded it, it was much like any other farmhouse: tall wooden ceilings to keep the place cool; five bedrooms, two for his close family and three spare; and a wraparound verandah that offered a glorious view of the sun setting between the hills. 

They placed the unconscious pilot into the smallest of the three spare bedrooms. While Zoe and Lily tended to her, Jack left the room to check the surveillance systems. Satellite, laser, and video all guarded the West property. On top of that, the place was a designated no-fly zone, owing to its status as an old Australian Army base. 

So how the hell had a Pilatus PC-12 managed to get so close to his back door? 

_You’re getting old, Jack._ A taunting, nagging voice inside his head repeated his words from earlier. _Old and sloppy. Six years of peace have made you soft._ For months after the events of the Machine, he’d had one eye constantly on the surveillance feed. Now he had let a completely strange plane crash-land in his backyard. 

‘Jack?’ 

Zoe had emerged from the pilot’s bedroom. 

‘How’s our patient going?’ he asked her, without moving his gaze from the screens. 

‘Well, she came through the crash better than I’d expected. Her left tibia is fractured, but the break seems clean from what I can tell. She’s tough.’ 

‘Any other injuries?’ 

Here Zoe hesitated. ‘Actually, yes,’ she said slowly, ‘but… I don’t think they’re from the crash. It looks like she’s been attacked.’ 

He looked at her at last. ‘Attacked by what?’ The question came out sharper than he’d meant for it to. 

She looked taken aback by his tone. ‘Hey, don’t yell at me. I don't know. Some kind of animal, I think.’ 

Jack rubbed his eyes. ‘Sorry, Zoe,’ he apologised. ‘I didn’t mean to shout. It’s just… unexpected, having a plane fall out of the sky on us.’ He turned back to the surveillance screens. ‘Hell, I should’ve seen it coming from five klicks away. Instead it practically falls on our goddamn heads.’ 

He heard Zoe come up behind him and felt arms slip around his waist. ‘Hey,’ she said quietly, leaning her head against his shoulder. ‘Don’t beat yourself up. You made a mistake. Learn from it, vow to do better, and move on.’ 

She was right, of course. ‘Thanks, Zoe,’ he said with a small smile. He turned his back on the surveillance screens and kissed her gently. Then he grabbed an iPad, streaming a copy of the surveillance feed, from the desk and followed her out of the room.

∞

‘Jesus…’ Jack breathed.

He was staring down at the face of the unconscious pilot – or, more accurately, at the grisly scars on the left side. In the rain and darkness outside they had been much harder to see, but in the bright light of the bedroom he saw that they stretched all the way from her eye to her mouth. 

‘What do you think it was?’ Zoe asked him. 

‘Hell if I know. Something big and pissed off.’ He pointed to a bandage fixed to the pilot’s left shoulder. ‘What’s under there?’ 

‘Some serious gashes,’ Zoe said. 

‘Same animal?’ 

‘I don’t think so,’ Lily piped up. As her parents turned to her, she shrugged. ‘The scratches in her shoulder aren’t as wide or as deep as the wounds on her face,’ she explained. ‘And they’re much more recent.’ 

Jack nodded. ‘Good work, team.’ He reached out to touch Lily’s shoulder, but at that moment the pilot stirred. 

Amber eyes fluttered open and stared blankly upwards for a moment, before blinking several times. Her arms and legs, including the one in a splint, shifted restlessly over the covers. Her breathing became agitated and her head rolled on the pillow. 

Her mouth opened and she muttered one word, over and over again, in Mandarin Chinese. 

Jack, Zoe, and Lily all translated in their heads. 

_‘Lucky… Lucky… Lucky…’_


	6. Exposure: First Contact V

‘You sure are lucky,’ Jack agreed. ‘That was one hell of a crash.’ 

The pilot seemed unable to hear him. She shook her head, eyes closing again. ‘Lucky,’ she whispered. ‘Lucky… no… Lucky, please –’ 

‘Hey, it’s okay,’ Lily said, putting a hand on their patient’s shoulder. ‘You’re safe here. Try to relax.’ 

‘No!’ The pilot sat up suddenly, causing Lily to jump back in shock. Gasping, the pilot looked around at her three rescuers. ‘Where am I? Who are you?’ 

Her accent was American. Jack and Zoe exchanged glances. The West family had not had the best experiences with Americans – including Jack’s insane father and half-brother, who had both tried to kill him and his close friends. 

‘I’m Jack West,’ he said after a pause. ‘This is my wife, Zoe, and my daughter Lily. Who the hell are you?’ 

The pilot wiped her brow with a shaking hand. ‘Dr CJ Cameron,’ she answered quietly. ‘I’m a researcher at Kakadu National Park.’ 

‘Kakadu?’ Jack folded his arms. ‘Up near Darwin? With an accent like that, you’re not native.’ 

‘I was born in California, moved here about four months ago.’ CJ reached up to touch her shoulder and looked surprised when she felt the bandage there. ‘I guess I owe you guys a thank you.’ She hesitated, then asked, ‘My plane…?’ 

‘Wrecked in my backyard,’ Jack said. ‘Care to explain how it got there?’ 

‘Oh, shit.’ CJ buried her head in her hands. After a moment, she looked up at Jack and sighed. ‘I was heading down to Canberra to… meet a friend of mine,’ she explained. ‘But I didn’t have enough fuel to make it all the way there, so I had to make a forced landing.’ She gave a sheepish half-smile. ‘I was aiming for your lake, but I obviously didn’t quite make it.’ 

‘Not enough fuel?’ Jack asked. There was something suspicious going on here. ‘It wouldn’t be two thousand k’s from here to Kakadu. With only one passenger, your plane should have easily been able to make that distance without running out of fuel.’ 

‘I wasn’t coming straight from Kakadu,’ CJ said. ‘I was coming from… somewhere else.’ 

Jack shook his head. None of this was adding up. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you were.’ 

With a swift movement, he drew a pistol from his belt and aimed it point-blank into Cameron’s face. 

‘Dad!’ Lily yelled. 

‘Easy, Jack…’ Zoe said warningly. 

Cameron’s already-pale face had blanched at the sight of the gun. 

‘Now,’ Jack said calmly, ‘I want you to start from the beginning. Who are you, who sent you, and what the fuck do you want with me and my family?’ 

∞

‘Fuck,’ CJ whispered, her eyes crossing slightly as she stared down the barrel of the gun. ‘I’m telling the truth, Mr West, I swear! I’m CJ Cameron, I’m a herpetologist. I used to lecture at the University of Florida, then I was a vet at the San Francisco Zoo. You can look me up in their records.’ 

‘I thought you said you were a researcher at Kakadu,’ Jack said. 

‘I am! I moved there four months ago.’ 

‘Why did you leave America?’ Zoe asked. 

‘I wanted a change of scene.’ 

Jack muttered, ‘Yeah, right.’ 

‘It’s true!’ CJ said desperately. ‘I can give you the names of a dozen of my colleagues up there. You call any of them and they’ll confirm everything I’ve said.’ 

Jack lowered the gun, but he didn’t put it back in its holster. ‘Where were you flying from, if not Kakadu?’ 

CJ swallowed. ‘The… the Philippines. I was visiting a friend.’ 

‘Who’s your friend?’ 

‘Look, does it matter?’ Now that Jack had lowered the gun, CJ appeared to have regained a bit of confidence. ‘Mr West, I’m very sorry that I disturbed you, and I’m thankful to you for helping me. But I have a job to do and I need to get out of here.’ 

‘How are you planning to do that without a plane?’ Zoe asked. 

‘I… I thought I might call my friend in Canberra and ask him to pick me up,’ CJ said hesitantly. ‘If you gave me the co-ordinates of your property, he could drop in and get me, and then we’d be out of here.’ 

‘There’s no way –’ Jack began, but at that moment a shrill beeping sounded from the iPad in his hand. 

‘What is that?’ CJ demanded. 

Jack glanced at Zoe. ‘Incoming plane,’ he said. 

‘What’s the ID?’ 

‘Bringing it up now.’ Jack tapped a command on the iPad, then a small smile appeared on his face. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s a friendly.’ 

The iPad read:

**AIRCRAFT APPROACHING  
ID: TU-144X CCCP-77147  
 _SKY WARRIOR_**

Lily looked eagerly at Jack. ‘Sky Monster?’

He nodded. ‘Sky Monster.’


	7. Exposure: First Contact VI

‘What the hell is a sky monster?’ CJ asked. 

Jack ignored her, instead addressing his troops. ‘Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’ll give Sky Monster a call when he lands and explain the situation. Zoe, you’re with our patient. If she tries anything, put her out with a sedative – or a bullet.’ 

CJ’s eyes widened. Zoe simply nodded. 

‘What about me?’ Lily demanded. 

Jack motioned for her to follow him out of the room. Once he was sure they were out of earshot of the woman in the bed, he murmured, ‘I need you to get on the Internet and find out everything you can about CJ Cameron. If she’s telling the truth, fine. If she’s not, I want to know exactly who she is.’

‘That’s it?’ Lily asked, disappointed. 

‘For now, yeah. See what you find. It might get interesting.’ 

‘As if,’ Lily grumbled, slouching off to her room and her laptop. 

Jack watched her go until her door had slammed. Then he jogged out of the farmhouse and back into the storm. 

∞ 

‘So, how are you feeling?’ Zoe asked CJ. 

The tension in the room could have been cut with a knife. 

‘Fucking wonderful, actually,’ CJ said after a minute. ‘You try being in a plane crash and then having a gun pointed in your face. Best night I’ve had in a while.’ 

Zoe took a seat in a chair in the corner, choosing to ignore CJ’s reply. Instead she said, ‘The gashes in your shoulder weren’t deep enough to need stitches, but they should stay covered to prevent infection. You’ve also fractured your tibia – that’s the bone in your leg –’ 

‘I know what a tibia is,’ CJ said frostily. ‘As I told your charming husband, I was a vet.’ 

‘Sure.’ 

CJ put a hand to her temple. ‘Look, I don't know who you people are, but you’ve got no reason not to trust me. I’m… ah…’ She winced, screwing her eyes shut. The hand at her temple, Zoe noticed, was shaking. 

‘Are you okay?’ 

‘Not really,’ CJ said through clenched teeth. ‘My head – God, it feels like it’s going to explode. I’m gonna be sick, or faint, or something –’ 

‘Lie down,’ Zoe said, standing up from her chair in alarm. ‘Deep breaths. You’ll be okay.’ 

She glanced up through the window into the rain. 

_I hope you know what you’re doing, Jack…_

∞

As the storm soaked him through for the second time that night, Jack West Jr was hoping the same thing.

He heard the sleek, swift Tupolev-144 soar over his head and watched it glide easily into the hangar despite the storm. _Now that’s how a real pilot flies,_ Jack thought spitefully. As he jogged, he pulled a sturdy-looking mobile phone from a pocket in his jacket and pulled up Sky Monster’s number. He knew it would take some time for Sky Monster to power down the plane and switch his phone back on, but he wanted to give the hairy New Zealander as much notice as possible. 

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go very wrong. 

On Jack’s fourth try, Sky Monster picked up the phone. 

_‘’Sup, Captain?’_

‘Hey, Sky Monster. Nice trip?’ 

_‘Friggin’ awful. This storm sucks, but I wanted to be back for the weekend. Mum and Dad were driving me crazy.’_

‘Fair enough,’ Jack said. ‘Listen, something’s happened back at the farmhouse…’ 

_‘What’s going on?’_

‘We’ve got a visitor. American. Says she’s a reptile researcher and she just _accidentally_ happened to crash her plane in our yard, but I don’t buy it.’ 

_‘Holy shit.’_

‘Yeah,’ Jack agreed. ‘Listen, I know she’s only just landed, but do you think you’d be able to prep the _Sky Warrior_ for emergency lift-off? I really hope we won’t need her, but if our visitor brings friends, we might have to make a quick getaway.’ 

_‘Sure thing, boss.’_

‘Thanks, Monster,’ Jack said. He closed the call and continue to run – in the _opposite_ direction to the hangar. 

He had some things he needed to check on.

∞

Alone in her room, Lily pulled up Google and punched in _‘cj cameron’_ with little enthusiasm. So this was what she got for pulling that lady out of a plane? Sent to her room to look up what they already knew? Even from the first page of results she could tell that their visitor had been telling the truth. Hits from the University of Florida, the San Francisco Zoo, and the Kakadu National Park Research Division confirmed that her name was Cassandra Jane Cameron, that she held a doctorate in herpetology, and that she’d been a star lecturer prior to…

‘Oh man,’ Lily whispered, staring at the screen. She’d brought up the image results, to make sure the woman who’d introduced herself as CJ Cameron was actually the one the Internet was talking about. The images were definitely of the same woman, but almost all of the pictures were from before the terrible accident she must have had. Her face was whole, unscarred. 

Seized with a sudden morbid curiosity, Lily opened up another tab and typed _‘cj cameron accident’_ into Google News. 

The results surprised her.


	8. Exposure: First Contact VII

Or rather, the _lack_ of results. 

_Your search - **cj cameron accident** \- did not match any documents._

Lily frowned at the screen. 

‘But that’s impossible,’ she muttered. Even if the people responsible for the attack had somehow covered it up – Lily supposed it was possible that the animal’s owner would not have wanted the story to go public – results that weren’t directly related should still have popped up. That was how search engines worked. 

She refreshed the page, but it remained the same. 

_Your search - **cj cameron accident** \- did not match any documents._

‘ _Any_ documents?’ Lily said doubtfully.

There was something weird going on. 

Grimacing to herself at the thought of what her geeky friends Lachlan and Julius Adamson would think, Lily switched from Google to the much clunkier Bing and tried again. 

Still nothing. 

Yahoo!, AOL, and Ask.com did not return any hits either. Now Lily was more than just suspicious. She was sure. 

There was more to CJ Cameron – and her history – than either she or the Internet would let on. 

But Lily was a daughter of the digital age, and she’d had a year since graduating high school to do nothing but mess around on the fastest Internet that money could buy. This, plus a six-year friendship with the Adamson twins, had taught her more than a few tricks. Whatever had been hidden online – and whoever was hiding it – Lily was determined to find out. 

After so long, she finally had a real challenge. 

Grinning to herself, Lily cracked her knuckles and set to work.

∞

Head bowed, Jack West ran through the rain in the direction of the lake that CJ Cameron had been aiming to ditch her plane in.

More specifically, he was heading for the small salt mine by the edge of the lake. Difficult to spot at the best of times, the camouflaged entrance was almost impossible to see through the storm, but Jack knew the route well. He also knew to avoid the handful of small hills that lay between him and the mine. The sand-covered mounds were seemingly natural, no different to any of the other hills that dotted Jack’s property. Only Jack, his family, and their few trusted friends knew that each heap of sand was actually covering _large RDX landmines equipped with pressure-sensitive trip plates_. If anything heavier than a wild dingo ran over the hills, it was in for a nasty surprise. 

The kind of surprise that exploded. 

So instead Jack weaved carefully in between the hills. Even with the winding path he had to take, he reached the door to the salt mine just minutes after leaving the farmhouse. Once there, he had to punch a string of numbers into a keypad to open the mine and navigate a winding tunnel in total darkness before he finally came to his destination: a wooden door marked with symbols. 

Seeing the symbols brought a strange lump to Jack’s throat. They were in Thoth, an ancient language that could only be understood by a handful of people in the world: the members of a remote African tribe, and Lily West and her twin brother Alexander. These symbols had been carved by Lily six years ago, after the events of the Machine. Though Jack himself was unable to read them, he could remember her reciting the words as though it had happened yesterday:

_Behind salt, beneath sand,_  
       _Hidden from the world,_  
       _Five treasures too great_  
       _To be entrusted to humanity’s lust._  
       _Instead, they remain here,_  
       _As their memories remain_  
       _As warnings in our minds_  
       _From this day to our last._

Jack did not enter the room. He could tell just from looking at the door that nobody had opened it since he, Zoe and Lily had sealed it six years ago. He wasn’t going to tamper with the complex locking mechanism they had installed just to double-check what he already knew: the Five Pillars were safe. 

The Pillars were _brick-sized diamonds_ , but they were valuable as much more than precious stones. Each had their own incredible power, and together they were able to save the Earth from destruction. But now that the calamitous Dark Sun had been repelled, the Pillars were nothing more than dangerous temptations. Jack had ordered them to be sealed up forever, and nobody had argued with him. 

Reaching out, Jack gently brushed the symbols carved by Lily’s hand. Then he turned and began to jog back up the dark tunnel, guided only by the flashlight on the side of his fireman’s helmet. 

As he ran, he stopped every few feet to check the red lights blinking on explosive charges set into the walls. The remote that would trigger their explosion was back at the farmhouse, hidden in a safe.

∞

‘Your temperature’s 40.6,’ Zoe said, frowning at the display on the thermometer. ‘You’re ill, Dr Cameron.’

‘No, really?’ CJ gasped, her face white as she lay back against the pillow, fighting the urge to be sick. 

Ignoring the sarcasm, Zoe put the thermometer back into her medical kit and instead reached for the bandage covering CJ’s shoulder. ‘I need to check if the wound is infected,’ she explained, peeling back the edge of the dressing. ‘I cleaned it before bandaging, but it might have been too late by then. What did this to you?’ 

CJ’s eyes were closed. There was no response. 

‘Dr Cameron,’ Zoe said loudly, ‘talk to me. What injured you?’ 

Still nothing. 

‘CJ, open your eyes!’ Zoe slapped her cheek. The woman stirred restlessly, but her eyes remained firmly closed. ‘Damn it, Dr Cameron. Shit! Wake up. Tell me what attacked you.’ 

At last, the feverish herpetologist cracked open her eyes. They were glassy and unfocused, staring at a spot over Zoe’s shoulder. Through cracked lips, CJ Cameron muttered, ‘She didn’t mean to… was ill… didn’t understand…’ 

‘Who didn’t understand?’ Zoe demanded. ‘Dr Cameron? Who attacked you?’ 

‘Lucky,’ CJ whispered, and fainted.


	9. Exposure: First Contact VIII

‘Oh, Christ,’ Zoe whispered. ‘Dr Cameron? CJ? Can you hear me?’ As she spoke loudly, she felt for a pulse at CJ’s carotid. It was there, but weak. 

She was in trouble. 

‘Lily!’ Zoe yelled. ‘I need the advanced medical kit!’ 

_‘I’m busy!’_ Lily yelled back. 

Zoe groaned in frustration. This was not the time for one of Lily’s moody teenage moments. ‘This is important!’ she shouted. 

_‘So is this!’_

_I hate teenagers,_ Zoe thought, conveniently forgetting that she had been one once. There was no other option – either she yelled at Lily until her throat was sore, or she went to get the damn medical kit herself. ‘I’ll be right back,’ Zoe said to the unconscious CJ. Then she ran out of the room, yanking her mobile out of her pocket as she went.

∞

The moment Jack had sealed the door of the salt mine behind him, his mobile phone rang. He had expected it to be Sky Monster informing him that the _Sky Warrior_ was prepped and ready, so he was surprised to read Zoe’s name on the display.

Something was wrong. 

‘Hey,’ he said, feeling his heartbeat accelerate. ‘What’s up?’ 

_‘Cameron’s sick,’_ Zoe replied. _‘Like, really sick. Severe headache, nausea, fever – temperature 40.6 and climbing. If it gets much higher she could go into seizures.’_

‘Any idea what’s causing it?’ 

_‘None. There’s no signs of infection at any of her wound sites. It could be something she contracted overseas?’_

‘Yeah, maybe. I’m heading back to the house now. I’ve told Sky Monster to keep the _Warrior_ prepped, just in case her friends turn up and we have to fly.’ 

_‘And the Pillars? You checked on them too?’_

‘Of course,’ Jack replied with a smile. ‘They’re fine. You know me too well, Zoe.’ 

_‘I know you’re shit scared and feeling out of your depth,’_ she answered, _‘and I’m starting to feel that way too. Just get back here as soon as you can, okay?’_

‘Roger that.’ Jack cut the call and picked up his pace. If Zoe was scared, let alone admitting it, something was _definitely_ wrong.

∞

Sure, Lily had had her fair share of moody moments over the last six years. But her refusal to leave her computer to help Zoe wasn’t out of sheer teenage spite – she was on the verge of a breakthrough.

To anyone who didn’t know computers the way Lily did, the screen of her laptop would have looked like an incomprehensible mess. Dozens of different sites and programs cluttered the display – some simple search engines, others nothing more than long strings of code. Lily’s fingers were practically flying over the keyboard as she typed out complex commands. Her incredible skill with languages extended to programming: she’d picked up HTML code as easily as she’d learned Spanish. Add to that the Adamson twins’ teaching and her natural intelligence and curiosity, and Lily had practically become a certified hacker. 

So hack she did. 

The first step was to figure out who was responsible for censoring the results related to Cameron’s accident. All nations on Earth censored their citizens’ Internet usage in some way or another, but there were certain countries that were particularly famous – or _in_ famous – for it. Lily’s first thought was of Cameron’s native USA, but that had been a dead end. There were no censored American articles relating to Cameron that Lily could dig up: the only remotely hidden things she could find were low-grade password-protected sites, like the University of Florida’s staff database. 

Stumped for a second, Lily paused to flex her fingers and let the programs and commands run their course. Whenever one hit a dead end, there was a single quiet _beep_ as it self-terminated – this had happened a few times already. On the other hand, if one of them found something interesting, it would – 

_Beep beep beep!_

Beep three times. 

Lily grinned. 

‘Gotcha,’ she said, flicking through programs until she found the right one. She was surprised to see it was named _RiverCrabTrap_. The phrase “river crab” was used by citizens of China to refer to Internet censorship. “Trapping” the river crabs meant the program would identify webpages that the Chinese government had attempted to censor. 

The weird thing was, Chinese censors weren’t supposed to affect _Australian_ Internet sites. 

So what did China have to do with CJ Cameron? 

And what was it so desperate to hide from the rest of the world?

∞

As Jack was running home in the rain, Zoe was grabbing her medical kit, and Lily was slowly digging her way through the Chinese censors, there was one final important thing happening on the Wests’ property.

Dr CJ Cameron was regaining consciousness. 

As the blackness of her vision slowly became shapes and colours, CJ felt the nausea roll over her again. The headache that had begun to build while she was flying the PC-12 had become an almost unbearable pain behind her eyes. It hurt to look up at the bedroom light, so she turned her head towards the door… 

…to see that she was alone in the room. 

The agony in her head wasn’t enough to stop her knowing what she had to do. 

Keeping her eyes fixed on the door in case Zoe returned, CJ Cameron slowly slipped her hand into her pocket, closed it around her mobile phone, and slowly withdrew it. 

Only then did she glance down, flick the phone on, and quickly press a single button. 

Speed dial.


	10. Exposure: First Contact IX

The second CJ cut the call and slipped the phone back into her pocket, Zoe burst into the room, dragging the advanced medical kit on its trolley. 

She stopped. 

‘Dr Cameron! You’re awake!’ 

CJ nodded weakly. 

‘How are you feeling?’ Zoe walked over and checked the heart rate monitor that was clipped to CJ’s finger. 

‘Better now,’ CJ rasped. ‘But my leg is fucking sore.’ 

‘Not your shoulder?’ Zoe shot back. 

CJ looked confused. ‘A broken leg is a bit more painful than a few scratches, Mrs West.’ 

_It would help if you told me what attacked you,_ Zoe thought, but she bit her tongue. ‘I can give you morphine for the pain,’ she said. ‘You’re not allergic?’ 

‘No.’ 

_That would have made things simpler,_ Zoe mused. 

Zoe loaded up the injection and stabbed it harder than necessary into CJ’s thigh. The vet scowled, but didn’t flinch. 

‘I can see why you’re a soldier and not a doctor,’ CJ commented acidly. 

‘You could be more grateful, considering we just saved your life.’ 

‘Oh yeah, I’m so grateful to have a gun shoved in my face!’ 

‘What the hell were you expecting after crashing your plane in our backyard?’ 

CJ glared at her.

∞

The call came from Sky Monster just as Jack reached the house.

‘Jack, the _Warrior_ ’s prepped and ready. What’s news from our drop-in?’ 

‘She’s pretty messed up from the crash,’ Jack said. ‘Really sick, according to Zoe.’ 

‘Make sure she doesn’t infect you. It’s probably smallpox.’ 

Jack chuckled. 

‘I’m serious, Jack. I don’t like this. I’m the only person who should be allowed to drop in on Casa West without warning.’ 

‘Trust me, I don’t like it either,’ Jack said. ‘But I’m keeping my guard up. Whatever she’s got planned, it won’t get past me.’ 

_You already screwed up once,_ the voice in his head reminded him. _How can you be sure it won’t happen again?_

Jack ignored it. ‘Monster. Are you heading back to the house now?’ 

‘Yeah, I’ll be there in a few.’ 

‘Good.’ He’d feel better with another member of the team close by. ‘See you soon.’

∞

Jack entered CJ’s room to find the two women glaring at each other.

‘How is she?’ he asked Zoe. 

‘Well enough to complain, so that's something.’ Zoe’s arms were folded. 

‘Your girl has a hell of a bedside manner,’ CJ muttered. 

Zoe ignored her, stepping closer to Jack and dropping her voice. ‘How is everything… outside?’ 

‘All fine. Monster’s on his way. He’s got the _Warrior_ ready just in case. I should go see if Lily’s found anything.’ Jack glanced at CJ, who was still glaring. ‘I hate to ask, Zoe, but…’ 

‘I’ll stay with her,’ Zoe said. ‘I hate the thought of her alone in my house even more than I hate the thought of sitting with her.’

∞

He met Lily halfway down the hall.

‘Dad,’ she gasped. ‘I was just coming to get you. You won't believe –’ 

‘You found something?’ 

‘It wasn’t easy,’ Lily explained, pride in her voice. ‘The basic stuff was all there, but someone had locked down anything to do with… you know, whatever happened to her face. So I had to figure out who was doing it, and it turns out it was the Chinese government.’ 

Jack frowned. ‘What do they have to do with –’ 

‘I wondered the same thing!’ Lily said enthusiastically. ‘It took me ages to get through. If anyone knows anything about censorship, it’s the Chinese. And… I found…’ 

For the first time, she looked uncertain. 

‘You’re just gonna have to come see for yourself.’ 

His heart racing, Jack followed his daughter into her bedroom. The mess of screens on her laptop was incomprehensible to him, but at Lily’s touch they cleared to reveal a single image. 

Jack leaned closer. 

He blinked. 

‘Holy shit,’ he said. 

The image was unmistakable. 

It was a dragon.  
 


	11. Exposure: First Contact X

Jack was dumbfounded. 

‘That’s a…’ 

‘A dragon,’ Lily said. 

‘Holy shit,’ he said again. 

Lily nodded. 

‘Where did you find this?’ 

‘Classified Chinese files,’ Lily said. ‘They tried pretty damn hard to hide them. What I could extract was pretty corrupted, but the images are clear. It’s dragons.’ 

Jack sat down on her bed, stunned. He’d seen a lot of crazy shit in his life, but this was pretty high up on the list. ‘What else did the files say?’ 

Lily grinned. ‘You won’t believe this, but there are mentions of a zoo.’ 

‘Jesus Christ…’ Jack whispered. ‘A dragon zoo?’ 

‘A dragon zoo.’ Lily tapped a key and a document in Chinese popped up. ‘There. Maps, plans, predicted figures… No coordinates, but it definitely existed.’ 

‘Exist _ed_?’ Jack stressed the past tense. 

‘It was destroyed,’ Lily explained. ‘Some freak accident a few months ago. Think Jurassic Park, except, well… it actually happened.’ She tapped a few more keys and a blurred photo of CJ Cameron appeared. ‘That’s where _she_ comes in. She was involved in the destruction somehow. There isn’t a lot of info on her, but the stuff I could find…’ 

She bit her lip. ‘It wasn’t pretty.’ 

‘You mean she caused it?’ Jack asked. 

‘I don't know about that.’ Lily swallowed. ‘But I do know she’s in danger. Whatever happened at the zoo is classified. The Chinese have done some crazy stuff trying to wipe it from the net, but Dr Cameron’s a liability. While she’s alive…’ 

‘…there’s someone to tell the story.’ Jack removed his helmet and ran a titanium hand through his hair. ‘So they’re after her?’ 

‘Yes,’ Lily whispered. 

‘Fucking hell,’ Jack sighed. ‘Of all the people who could have paid us a visit.’

∞ 

Before he could make it to CJ’s room – Lily had stayed behind to back up and print what she’d found – Jack’s phone rang again. It was Sky Monster, demanding that someone open the back door to the house and “let him out of this goddamn torrential hellstorm”.

Smiling for what felt like the first time in a while, Jack went to do so. 

‘Sky Monster!’ he yelled over the rain, throwing the door wide. 

The enormous, hairy New Zealander stepped into the house and enveloped Jack in a bear hug that left him dripping wet. 

‘You have no idea how glad I am to see you,’ Jack said. 

Monster was grinning under his shaggy black beard. ‘The feeling’s mutual, Jack. Where are the girls?’ 

‘One’s with our visitor,’ Jack said. ‘The other is printing out some of the craziest shit since the literal tomb of Jesus.’ 

‘Don’t tell me,’ Sky Monster said. ‘The Four Fearsome Fairies, or something.’ 

‘Even better.’ Jack shook his head slowly as the image of the dragon re-entered his mind. _First the Capstone, then the Pillars, then the Warriors, and now fucking dragons._ Nothing would surprise him anymore. ‘You can go see for yourself. Lily’s room.’ 

‘What are you doing?’ Monster asked. 

‘I’ve gotta evict our unwelcome guest,’ Jack answered shortly. 

Grimacing, he headed for her room.

∞

‘You need to go,’ Jack announced.

CJ looked up from the bed. ‘What?’ 

‘What’s going on?’ Zoe asked. 

‘Our friend here is a fugitive from the Chinese government,’ Jack said. 

_‘What?’_

‘Do you want to explain, Dr Cameron?’ Jack asked. ‘Or shall I bring in my top researcher?’ 

‘How did you…?’ CJ whispered. 

‘My daughter Lily is quite the hacker,’ Jack explained. The same pride that had been in her voice when she was talking about her findings was now in his. ‘I put her in charge of finding information on you. I wanted to see if your story checked out. I got more than I expected to find… in classified government files.’ 

‘Your daughter hacked into classified files of the Chinese government?’ 

CJ was aghast. Even Zoe looked surprised. She’d known Lily was into computers, but this was something else. 

Right on cue, a beaming Lily stepped into the room with a sheaf of papers in her hands. 

‘Oh my God,’ CJ said. ‘You’ve killed us all.’


	12. Exposure: First Contact XI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been motivated to post this chapter by the news that _The Four Legendary Kingdoms_ officially comes out in one month! Unfortunately its release will most likely render this story no longer canon-compliant. Still, my fic is set two years before T4LK, so we can dream! Anyway, enjoy this update, and you can read the first chapter of T4LK [here](https://www.facebook.com/OfficialMatthewReilly/photos/a.10150199869401339.308069.12532471338/10154104833711339/?type=3&theater) while you wait for its release!

Jack stared at her. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ 

CJ was struggling into a sitting position, her scarred face grimacing against the pain. This whole thing was so fucked up she didn’t even know where to start. ‘My brother Hamish is a photographer,’ she began. ‘Once, a few years ago, he saw some of his photos being used on a Chinese website without his permission. He contacted them to get them removed, but they wouldn’t take them down, so he asked one of his friends to hack the site and replace them with… certain other images.’ 

She stopped to take a breath, exhausted just by sitting up. ‘His friend was contacted by Chinese authorities _two hours later_. They’d traced his IP address. Knew his name, location, social security number, everything. They threatened him with extradition if he didn’t have the images removed in thirty minutes.’ 

Zoe and Jack looked at Lily. 

‘I was careful,’ Lily protested. ‘I went through a VPN and a dozen other protections. And our house is unlisted. There’s no way they could –’ 

‘Are you serious?’ CJ laughed, slightly hysterically. ‘We are talking about the _Chinese government_. Do you really think they won’t find you because you’re not listed in the White fucking Pages?’ 

‘I – I made _sure_ they couldn’t trace us,’ Lily insisted. 

But there was a tremor in her voice. 

CJ looked back up at Jack. ‘Trust me, Mr West,’ she said. ‘None of us are safe here. You can kick me out into the rain if you want, but that won’t be anywhere near enough to save your ass.’

∞

Without the word, the four team members left the room to convene.

‘Dad, I _swear_ I was careful,’ Lily protested. ‘I’d never do anything to put us in danger, you know that –’ 

‘Lily, this isn’t like messing with Mark Zuckerberg,’ Jack said sharply. ‘This is one of the most powerful, _ruthless_ governments in the world.’ 

‘She could be bluffing,’ Zoe ventured. ‘Trying to throw us off. Scare us.’ 

‘It’s your call, Jack,’ Sky Monster said. ‘Say the word and the _Warrior_ can have us halfway across the globe.’ 

Jack West was silent, thinking. He hated the idea of running away. This farmhouse had been his home for six years, and the idea of abandoning it left a sick feeling in his stomach. Added to that, there was no guarantee that there was any actual threat – he didn’t trust the American interloper any further than he could throw her. But if he chose to stay and it turned out Cameron was right, he’d be putting Zoe and Lily in danger. 

‘Jack?’ Zoe asked gently, startling him out of his thoughts. 

‘All right,’ he began. 

They never got to hear what he would have said.

∞ 

There was a shrill beeping from the front room, where Jack had left the surveillance iPad when he had dashed out in the rain to check on the Pillars. He dashed into the room with Zoe, Lily and Sky Monster on his heels.

‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ 

The display read:

**AIRCRAFT APPROACHING  
ID: J-11/A PLAAF-491   
_UNKNOWN AIRCRAFT_**

‘It’s a Shenyang J-11 jet fighter,’ he said. ‘Solely owned and operated by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force of China.’

Lily’s face went white. 

‘How much time do we have?’ Zoe asked. 

Jack tapped the iPad to change the display. It now showed a radar image with the farmhouse in the centre. A flashing red circle depicting the J-11 fighter was approaching at speed. 

‘We can make it to the hangar if we leave now and run,’ Jack said. ‘The storm will give us some cover.’ 

‘Then let’s get the hell out of here,’ Sky Monster said. 

At his words, there was a soft _whoosh_ and a peregrine falcon swooped into the room to land on Jack’s shoulder. The bird had been sheltering in another part of the house after being caught out in the storm, but Horus was clever enough to know that they were about to move. 

‘Wait!’ Lily said. ‘What about Cameron?’ 

Zoe and Jack looked at each other. Dragging the injured, unwell American woman with them was sure to slow them down, and time was of the essence here. On the other hand, they weren’t in the business of leaving people to die, even if they didn’t trust them. 

‘Jack?’ Zoe asked. 

Once again it came down to him, and the voice in his head wasn’t helping. _Hurry up, Jack!_ it snarled. _Make your choice. You hesitated once, and now a Chinese bomber is about to rain down hell on your head._

As he stood there, motionless, thinking furiously but indecisive, it happened again. 

The iPad beeped. 

‘ _Two_ planes?’ Sky Monster gasped. 

Two planes.


	13. Exposure: First Contact XII

****

**AIRCRAFT APPROACHING  
ID: J-16/X PLAAF-556  
_UNKNOWN AIRCRAFT_**

A _second_ Chinese plane.

Newer, faster, and ten times deadlier than the first. 

‘Jesus Christ,’ Jack swore. ‘Okay. That second plane will be on us in minutes. We’ll have to take the tunnel. Zoe, Sky Monster, take Lily and go. I’ll grab the essentials and be right behind you.’ 

‘Dad, I can help you get the stuff,’ Lily said. 

Jack grimaced. ‘You’ve done enough, Lily,’ he said sternly. ‘The tunnel. Now!’ When she hesitated, her eyes darkening in the way that meant she was about to argue with him, he simply turned his back on her and jogged down the hall towards the surveillance room, Horus on his shoulder. 

He couldn’t face another fight right now. 

‘Come on, Lily,’ Zoe said quietly. ‘There’s no time to argue. Let’s go.’

∞ 

“The tunnel” was an understatement.

More accurately, Jack and his team had built a _labyrinth_ of criss-crossing rabbit holes underneath the house. Designed to bamboozle anyone who managed to chase them underground, the complex tunnel system also contained its fair share of traps and snares. Subtle symbols carved into the wooden support beams showed the only safe way. A single wrong turn could lead to anything from a simple dead end to a deep pit filled with lethal spikes. 

Jack was quite proud of it, if he did say so himself. 

Guided by their flashlights, Zoe, Lily and Sky Monster raced through the tunnels, pausing only to double-check the carved symbols. The route twisted and turned, slowing them down – an annoying but necessary delay, since the straightest route was the one an adversary would be most likely to follow. 

Every few dozen steps, Lily or Zoe would glance behind them to check for a fourth flashlight. 

But there was no sign of Jack.

∞ 

Jack West dashed around his house like a madman, his faithful falcon soaring behind him.

In the surveillance room he quickly unplugged a computer hard drive and shoved it into a backpack. Next was the study, which yielded another hard drive as well as a thick black leather folder and a pair of dense books. Last was the bedroom he shared with Zoe. He shoved their bed away from the wall with a grunt, then opened the safe the wooden hardboard had concealed from view. 

Inside the safe was a single item: a remote handheld unit that was programmed to set off a careful series of detonations in the small salt mine near the lake. Without a second thought, he reached inside and hit the button. 

Then he grabbed a photograph from the bedside table and went to see their visitor.

∞ 

‘What’s going on?’ CJ demanded. ‘And am I hallucinating, or is that a bird?’

‘Her name is Horus, and we’re leaving,’ Jack said. ‘Your friends have decided to pay us a visit.’ 

CJ’s eyes widened. ‘Friends?’ 

‘Yes. Friends. Two Chinese jet fighters who will probably be visible through that window any second now,’ Jack snapped. ‘So if you don’t want a bomb dropped on your head, I suggest you get up and get the hell out of here.’ 

CJ’s face was so pale it was almost green. ‘I don’t think I can.’ She swung her legs over the side of the bed, closing her eyes and gritting her teeth. The light burned, and the slightest movement of her head caused pain to shoot down her spine. ‘Sorry, Mr West. I don’t think I’m going anywhere.’ 

Without saying a word, Jack picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, Horus flapping away with an indignant squawk. CJ could only groan, her mouth clamped tight against an onrush of nausea. ‘Don’t you dare throw up on me,’ Jack muttered as he hurried out of the room. 

They were almost in time. 

The concealed entrance to the tunnel system was set into the timber flooring of the fifth bedroom. Jack crouched awkwardly in front of it, thrown slightly off balance by the woman on his shoulder and the heavy backpack. As CJ slid to the floor and began to manoeuvre herself clumsily through the trapdoor onto the first rough dirt step, Jack couldn’t help but glance anxiously through the window. Through the ceaseless drumming of the torrential rain, he thought he could hear the quiet hum of a jet fighter. 

And then, illuminated by a flash of lightning, he saw them. 

In front: a smooth, grey Shenyang J-11. 

And just behind it: a sleek, dark Shenyang J-16. 

‘Dr Cameron,’ he said urgently, ‘we really have to –’ 

He was cut off by a noise that chilled him to the core. 

The J-16 had opened fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This just in: writing for Horus is actually the worst and I wish I'd left the stupid bird out in the rain. I will 100% forget about her in every chapter from now on and I beg your forgiveness. And yeah, I put an underground maze below Jack's house, because why the hell not? 
> 
> **ps:** Please forgive Jack for being an arse to Lily. He's very stressed.  
>  **pps:** I see you, small but dedicated Matthew Reilly fandom. I will be posting more regular updates on this fic as we await the release of T4LK! #pray4zoe


	14. Exposure: First Contact XIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY TWO-WEEKS-UNTIL-T4LK DAY! Have an update while we chew our fingernails to pieces fretting over our faves. #nooneissafe

Jack hit the deck, waiting for the hail of bullets and the almighty explosion. 

They never came. 

Instead, there was a thunderous noise from outside the house, casting a flare of bright orange light through the window. Jack, sprawled on the timber floor with his hands over his head, recognised the glow of an explosion through his eyelids. _Did they miss the house completely?_ he thought wonderingly. Jesus, that was some luck. 

But it wouldn’t last long. 

They needed to move. 

‘What’s happening?’ CJ asked, peeking her head out from inside the tunnel. 

‘That’s the Chinese,’ Jack said darkly. ‘They just opened fire.’ 

‘But they missed us?’ 

‘Seems like it.’ Jack was thinking hard, remember the flare of orange light behind his eyelids. That kind of explosion didn’t come from shooting missiles into the dirt. 

It came from something big being blown out of the sky. 

‘Stay low,’ he urged CJ. ‘I have a hunch.’ 

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. 

Cautiously, Jack rose slowly from the floor, until he was crouching just high enough to be able to see the two fighters through the window. 

Except there was only _one_ fighter through the window. 

Jack grinned, his hunch confirmed. 

‘Thank God for Sky Monster.’

∞

But Sky Monster wasn’t thanking anyone right now.

On the contrary, he was cursing Jack West Jr and his harebrained tunnel scheme with every bit of energy he had in his big hairy body. 

‘Swear jar,’ Lily chimed in at a particularly vicious turn of phrase. 

‘Listen, kid,’ Sky Monster gasped, pausing to hold his breath as they squeezed through a tight point in the underground labyrinth. ‘We might be known as the land of the Hobbits, but that doesn’t mean all New Zealanders enjoy spending time in tiny holes under the ground.’ 

‘I never knew you were such a claustrophobe, Sky Monster,’ Zoe observed, pausing for the briefest of moments to double-check a symbol carved into the wooden supports. 

‘There’s a reason I joined the Air Force, Princess,’ the big New Zealander replied grimly. ‘I’d rather be 20000 feet above the ground than two feet under it.’ 

Zoe grinned, her white teeth flashing in the torchlight. ‘Well, don’t panic too much. We should be almost there by now.’ 

As it happened, Zoe was absolutely right. 

And Jack was absolutely wrong.

∞

‘They must have reached the hangar and fired up the _Sky Warrior_ ,’ Jack explained, his eyes pinned on the remaining plane. In the dim light under the heavy cloud cover, it was hard to see the plane in any great detail. ‘One fighter’s down. Come on, Sky Monster.’

But the lone fighter flew on. 

‘We should keep going,’ CJ urged, looking up at Jack from awkwardly half-in, half-out of the tunnel. 

‘Wait...’ Jack said slowly. 

There was a blinding flash of lightning, so bright Jack instinctively half-covered his eyes. A blink later it was followed up by a deafening thunderclap. 

‘Mr West!’ CJ yelled. 

Horus squawked, flying to Jack’s chest and nestling into a pouch in his canvas jacket. The message was clear: _Let’s go!_

‘Something’s not right,’ he murmured to the bird. He pulled out his mobile phone and dialled Sky Monster’s number. 

No response. 

‘Jack!’ CJ insisted. 

There was another lightning strike. This time, Jack was ready for it. He squinted through the brightness towards the remaining plane. 

And his suspicions were confirmed. 

The J-16 – the plane that had _opened fire_ – was still flying. 

And yet, it hadn’t fired again. 

On a whim, Jack switched to his battered radio scanner and began flicking through frequencies at random. 

_‘...a message of surrender. I repeat, this is a message of surrender. Mr West, I mean you no harm. I am here for CJ Cameron. I repeat, this is a message of surrender...’_

Jack turned to look at CJ, expecting to see shock and fear in her expression. 

Instead, he was taken aback by the look of _relief_ that blazed across her face. 

Smiling, she said, ‘It’s Greg.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Sky Monster really claustrophobic in canon? Who the fuck knows. Pooh Bear has two names. No-one is safe. 
> 
> Also, while writing this chapter I came to the conclusion that Monster is gonna be the one to bite it, and dramatically divulge his real name to the team with his dying breath. #sozactuallysoz #ipromisehewillsurvivethisfic


End file.
